People Analytics: Transforming Management with Behavioral Data

Born out of the MIT Media Lab, people analytics, using behavioral data to understand and manage organizations, has fundamentally changed how companies operate. This course will provide participants with a foundation in people analytics through discussion and hands-on exercises with real world data and tools. There are basic questions that have an impact on businesses that no one can answer. How much does the executive team communicate with engineering? Is a manager really spending time with their team? How often should a salesperson speak with a customer? The reason we can’t answer these questions is a lack of data. Surveys and consultants are useful, but their shortcomings are evident. They’re slow, subjective, and don’t actually measure what happens in the real world.

New data has changed this equation. We are constantly generating data about our behavior: e-mail, IMs, calendar data, and increasingly sensor data about the real world. This is people analytics: using behavioral data about how people work to change how companies are managed. In this course, we’ll first investigate what data we have at our disposal now and in the near future. We’ll also discover what behavioral metrics really matter and how can you communicate these metrics to other stakeholders. Next, we’ll focus on how these new metrics and data streams can rapidly increase the speed and quality of decision making. Similar to A/B testing in the online space, now we can A/B test how businesses are managed. Compensation, IT systems, real estate decisions, and even org charts can now be rapidly deployed and quantitatively tested by combining behavioral data and key performance indicators (KPIs). We’ll discuss examples from Fortune 500 companies that have successfully used people analytics to improve their organizations, as well as how they are transitioning to an A/B testing decision making culture.

Lead Instructor(s):

Alex Pentland

Ben Waber

Date:

TBD

Course Length:

2 Days

Course Fee:

$2,000

CEUs:

1.2

Status:

Closed

It is highly recommended that you apply for a course at least 6-8 weeks before the start date to guarantee there will be space available. After that date you may be placed on a waitlist. Courses with low enrollment may be cancelled up to 4 weeks before start date if sufficient enrollments are not met. If you are able to access the online application form, then registration for that particular course is still open.

Course Schedule:

Instructors:

Professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland helped to create and direct the Media Lab, where he directs the Human Dynamics research group and leads the Connection Science initiative. One of the most-cited scientists in the world, Forbes recently declared him one of the "7 most powerful data scientists in the world" along with Google founders and the Chief Technical Officer of the United States. He is a founding member of advisory boards for Google, AT&T, Nissan, and the UN Secretary General, and a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded more than a dozen companies including social enterprises such as the Data Transparency Lab, the Harvard-ODI-MIT DataPop Alliance, and the Institute for Data-Driven Design. Pentland and his students pioneered computational social science, organizational engineering, wearable computing (Google Glass), image understanding, and modern biometrics. His most recent books are Social Physics (Penguin Press, 2014) and Honest Signals (MIT Press, 2008). He received his BS in computer science from the University of Michigan, and his PhD in computer science, psychology, and AI from MIT. Pentland is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, a leader within the World Economic Forum, and has received numerous awards and prizes including the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review, the 40th Anniversary of the Internet from DARPA, and the Brandeis Award for work in privacy.

Ben Waber is President and CEO of Humanyze, a behavioral analytics company based off of his research, who literally wrote the book on People Analytics. He is also a visiting scientist at the MIT Media Lab, where he received his PhD in the Human Dynamics Group working with Prof. Alex (Sandy) Pentland. He was previously a Senior Researcher at Harvard Business School in the Organizational Behavior group. His work centers around using real time data flows to rethink management of people, physical architecture, corporate planning, and training, among other things. His work has been featured in many major outlets. Before Humanyze he consulted for industry leaders such as LG, McKinsey & Company, and Gartner on technology trends, social networks, and organizational design. Waber's current research interests include dynamic organizational design, organizational behavior, social networks, sensor networks, prediction mechanisms, and information flow.

Links & Resources:

Articles

Location:

This course takes place on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We can also offer this course for groups of employees at your location. Please complete the Custom Programs request form for further details.